Greece

Εξαντλημένο στον εκδότη, δεν υπάρχει δυνατότητα παραγγελίας.

The remote, uninhabited island of Falconera almost half way between Athens and Crete is the focus of daring exploits in the last months of World War II. If the German munitions fleet succeeds in reinforcing the German army on Crete the Occupation will continue, prolonging the war. The British navy can stop this fleet only if they can locate it, information that only can be provided by a small schooner from the Greek Schooner Raiding Flotilla. The story is fiction but the setting real. The author, Alexis Ladas, was a 24 year old captain on a Greek Raiding Schooner in 1944. The little known Greek Schooner Raiding Flotilla in World War II; its bases in Alexandria, Egypt and Deremen, Turkey; its only slightly disguised commander; and the feelings of the book's hero in war were very real indeed. The author wrote what he lived. On one level, this book is a gripping romance and a suspense-filled tale of action. It also is a fount of information about the Aegean, sailing in the Aegean, and Greek sailing lore.

I declare for myself there is nothing delightful          5

than when joy possesses a whole people,

and banqueters in the halls listen to a minstrel

tables in front of them laden with meat and bread,

while the stewrd pours wine from the bowl              10

and carries it round and fills the cups.

This seems to my mind the fairest thing of all to me.

 

Homer, The Odyssey, ix.5-11 

What do we think about when we think of Greek food? For many, it is the meze and traditional plates of a typical Greek island taverna from summer holidays or from Greek restaurants at home. This book takes us into and beyond the taverna to offer us a unique, comprehensive history of the foods of Greece. Andrew and Rachel Dalby discuss how the land was first settled, what was grown, and how certain fruits, herbs and vegetables came to be identified. Moving through prehistorical and classical Greece, and the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires, they explore the variety of Greek foods among communities outside the national borders as well as the food culture of the regions and islands of Greece itself. Through a synthesis of modern Greek food, with all that it owes to Christianity and to Greeks of the diaspora, they lead us into a discussion of Greek hospitality. Greek food is brimming with thousands of centuries of history, lore and culture. With many superb illustrations, and traditional recipes that blend historical and modern flavours, Gifts of the Gods is a fine account of this rich and ancient cuisine.

Put in the context of Greek mythology, history and geography, and set against a background of current issues such as wildfire, water supply and economic crisis, the author charts the challenges, achievements and pleasures that he and his wife experience during two decades creating a new home and lifestyle in the Mani peninsula of southern, mainland Greece.

Pictorial, Descriptive and Historical The Emperor Hadrian possessed a magnificent villa at Tivoli, of which the ruins still remain. In it he endeavoured to perpetuate his own Recollections of Greece. He there erected buildings to which he gave the names of Poecile and Lyceum; by their side he planted the Grove of an Academy, and he carried the stream of an ideal Peneus through the pleasant Vale of an imitative Tempe. The Traveller in Greece constructs in his own mind such a villa at this. He furnishes it with the beautiful scenes, which he once visited in that country; he refreshes it with the clear waters and cool shades of a Tempe; he decorates it with the fair porticos of a Poecile, a Luceum, and an Academy. But his recollections of Greece, like the buildings of Hadrian, are liable to fall into decay; the Author of the following pages has, therefore, attempted to give a permanence to his own remini- scences by constructing a humbler Tivoli, in which he hopes that others may perhaps enjoy some share of that pleasure, which was felt of old by the Greek Traveller in the Villa of Hadrian.

In a series of seven trenchant interventions Alain Badiou analyses the decisive developments in Greece since 2011. Badiou considers this Mediterranean country "a sort of open-air political lesson", with much to tell us about the wider situation. Greece is exemplary of "our fundamental contradictions in Europe, which are also ultimately the fundamental contradictions of the world such as it is-the world served up to the authoritarian anarchy of capitalism." Notwithstanding the Greeks' heartening opposition to the financial markets' hegemony, Badiou considers it also important to address the reasons why this opposition failed. "Movementist" politics may arouse widespread sympathy, but for the French philosopher they have "absolutely no effect other than to temporarily trap the movement in the negative weakness of its affects." Badiou argues that a consequential opposition inspired by the emancipatory politics of the past-or by what he calls "the communist hypothesis"-should set its compass by the "orienting maxims" proposed in this book, defining a direction for political action.